Nick Winder is the founder of Illness To Ultra. A blog and online coaching service looking to help others enhance their health and achieve new running goals. Because of Nicks’s past health issues, he approaches running with a health-first mindset. First ensuring no harm is done through training and racing, and second, promoting healthy sustainable practices to enhance all areas of life. After suffering from an unknown illness that left him bed-bound for months he is now well on the way to completing his ultimate goal of finishing an Ultra Marathon and eventually proving that “Illness To Ultra” is truly possible.

Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Nick Winder about his journey from illness to ULTRA.

Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:

  • Why people should evaluate all areas of their life to aid with specific issues.
  • How it’s important even for runners to take a day off from time to time.
  • Why most of people’s biggest goals are achieve incrementally, not all at once.
  • How starting out with walking is a great way to eventually get to running.
  • Why we have to find the right way to present the information about barefoot running.

Connect with Nick:

Guest Contact Info

Instagram
@illnesstoultra

Facebook
facebook.com/illnesstoultra

Links Mentioned:
illnesstoultra.com
https://illnesstoultra.com/the-healthy-runner/
https://illnesstoultra.com/themovementmovement

Connect with Steven:

Website

Xeroshoes.com

Twitter
@XeroShoes

Instagram
@xeroshoes

Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes

 

Steven Sashen:

You want to get healthy? What are you going to do? Clearly, you need to run and get fit, right? Wrong. That is perhaps the worst thing you can do. Maybe I don’t know. We’re going to find out on today’s episode of the MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, often starting feet first, because those things are your foundation, but there’s other parts of your body too. We’ll talk about them too. Most importantly, we break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or do yoga or CrossFit or lift, whatever it is that you like to do to do it enjoyably, efficiently, effectively. Did I mention enjoyably? I know I did. That was a trick question, because look, if you’re not having fun, do something different until you are.

And by the way, we call this the MOVEMENT Movement, because we’re creating a movement that involves you, and I’ll tell you how it’s really easy about natural movement, where we’re trying to make people realize that natural movement, letting your body do what bodies are supposed to do is the obvious, better, healthy choice. The way we currently think of natural food, the movement part about you, it’s really easy, just participate. Just if you go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com, you’ll find the previous episodes you can listen to. You’ll find all the places you can find the podcast, all the places podcasts can be found, you’ll find ways that you can interact with us on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, et cetera, et cetera, how you can email us, how you can subscribe to hear about upcoming episodes. In short, if you want to be part of the tribe, you know what to do, please subscribe. So let’s jump in. Nick, welcome. Before I say anything else, why don’t you tell people who the hell you are and what the hell you do?

Nick Winder:

So hi. Yeah, I’m Nick Winder and I’m the founder of Illness to Ultra and that’s a running blog and coaching service. And it has an emphasis on health. So I feel that there’s often an issue in the running kind of industry in the community where fitness is key and running and the extent of your running is the only thing in your life, whereas it needs to be healthy and I’ve gone through this myself. So previously, I’ve had medical issues and I found that taking a holistic view on your running and your health creates a better body. And interestingly, a better running career.

Steven Sashen:

So since holistic is a word that is bandied about and misused often, by the way, if you ever want to have some fun, do a YouTube search for holistic auto repair and it’s one of my favorite commercials ever done. I don’t even remember what it’s for, but if you just search for holistic auto repair, I’ll put a link in the show notes because it’s hysterical. But anyway, when you use the phrase holistic, what do you mean by that?

Nick Winder:

Okay. So personally, what that means to me is actually looking at areas of your life, which can actually help in other areas. So this example is basically with running. And with running, then a lot of people think that it’s all about your training and it’s all about how far, how hard, or even how soft you can run at the same time. And really there was so many other things that can have a contributing factor to that, and they may be completely obtuse to what you think and we’ll get into some of those I’m sure, but so to me, it’s having a look at other areas of your life, which can actually aid in specific areas and like running, for example.

Steven Sashen:

It is interesting because I know, especially with distance runners, that most of them think that the solution for everything is just running more.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the Type A kind of mentality. I had that myself as well. Like every training room, I want to go out and I want to do the best I can, but the best you can is not always the hardest. It can be the softest, as I mentioned before, it could be an easy one. It can be something just to take your mind off things. It could be a mental thing as well. So there are so many other areas that you need to think about.

Steven Sashen:

Well, including the not running option, one that most people like. I trained with a lot of distance runners and you mentioned something to them, like taking a day off and you just look, the look of terror is incredible.

Nick Winder:

Yeah, exactly. And that’s all part of it. And even to the point of taking a day off and even taking a day off over things as well. So work creates stress, work creates stress, and then you go and run and then imagine that stressful day, like you’re going to just be absolutely pounding yourself all day. So there can be other areas which are creating that stress. So, yeah.

Steven Sashen:

So let’s back up a giant step. Your website is Illness to Ultra. So I’m sure you’ve told this story a million times, but if you would indulge me and share it with people who haven’t heard it, some of whom I’m sure who are listening and watching have, but et’s chat about that first.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. So this comes back to me.

Steven Sashen:

Tell us.

Nick Winder:

Well, I’m hoping that others can actually take from this story, but yeah, so Illness to Ultra. So about four years ago, I was having the time of my life. I was traveling around the US and I was running everywhere, I thought I was healthy, I was fit and I was healthy. And that ended up being, well, it wasn’t true. So ironically, I was actually in a Walmart and I ended up being super dizzy and I ended up going into the emergency care. And suddenly, they didn’t find anything wrong with me at that point, but I was unable to walk in the end.

So I spent nearly, I don’t know, I spent months of being bedridden, completely bedridden. And I was actually, I went into ER quite a few times, and then I was repatriated back over to the UK at that point. Really glad that my brother took me in. He was looking after me and his family was looking after me at that point, but it took me a long time to build back up to be able to even walk. So those minor steps of being able to go to the shops or something like that were super difficult.

Steven Sashen:

Pausing there for a second. First of all, you’re not the first person who have gotten dizzy in a Walmart. That place is crazy making, but secondly, I mean, did you ever get a diagnosis or did anyone ever identify whatever it was that was keeping you from walking and keeping you in bed?

Nick Winder:

Yeah. So this is kind of the strange thing really. So no, no, I never got that. I went back to the UK and I went to many doctors, I went to specialists. And in the end, I’d say the sad thing for me is they offered the option of antidepressants. And in one aspect, I can say, yeah, I understand I was depressed, but why was I depressed? I was stuck in bed, literally, I was stuck in bed. So obviously, I’m going to be a depressed at that point, but there was no look in the fundamental aspect of my health, like why was I unhealthy? They were just trying to treat these symptoms. And these symptoms were piling up day after day.

And in the end, I had to basically do it myself. I had to work out what was wrong with my body. And now I am the best personal doctor I can have because I can tell everybody how I’m feeling, what I’m feeling and things like that. And really not having the diagnosis wasn’t really too much of a problem for me personally, but I completely understand if I want a different route and found the right doctor, found the right medical professionals, I could have got something which was much better, maybe a diagnosis. It doesn’t really matter now.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. But I mean, I can only imagine that you also got opinions from everybody you could think of with ideas for things to try that could not have been crazier.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is it’s like everyone’s trying to compare symptoms. And yeah, some of them do compare, but I’m like to a point, it’s like, well, to be honest, getting downstairs to go to the shower is difficult. Have you ever had that? It’s really hard to compare to some of these symptoms.

Steven Sashen:

People go, well, I don’t know, we have seven stairs. How many stairs do you have?

Nick Winder:

We were living on three flights, so three different floors at one point. So, yeah.

Steven Sashen:

Oh man. So I mean, was there a pivotal moment that changed from looking for a solution to looking internally, if you will, for a solution?

Nick Winder:

I would actually say no, because this is an incremental process and I think this relates to everywhere in your life. It’s always an incremental process. So little by little, I learned more and more. So I was able to say, okay, this is interesting, I can see that I’m not holding onto weight one thing. So I was losing weight. So obviously, there is a digestive issue or something like that. So yeah, it’s those incremental steps that you take towards the actual result that you require is the main thing.

Steven Sashen:

So, okay. So once you started taking on this, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not path or journey or project, you know where I’m going, once you started taking on the responsibility for your own healing, what was that like and what happened?

Nick Winder:

So lots of mistakes were made along the way.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, yeah, I got to hear about that then. Give me your favorite mistake.

Nick Winder:

Oh, wow. Okay. So I don’t know, some of the major ones is basically like all the things that you try to get better, like for example, you’d maybe mess around with your food and the things that you’re eating.

Steven Sashen:

You’re going to eat, come on, you got to give me something more specific. Were you only on all Twinkie diet? Where are you on, what’d you try that didn’t work? I mean, this is interesting, because when I talk to people about running problems, like running form issues, one of the things I’ll often have them do is exaggerate the thing they’re doing wrong so that they can go, oh, and they can feel it for the first time. So I’m super curious when you say diet things that didn’t work, I’m really curious, like what’d you try and what didn’t work?

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. So interestingly, so I’d say I’ve got down the gut health route. So the example of many pieces of information to say what is a good gut health or how do you solve your gut health is to add more fiber. That’s usually the broad answer that you normally hear. The thing is I wasn’t able to properly metabolize or not able to actually use that fiber correctly. So it was just passing through me, completely passing through me not to get horrible, but upping my fiber content at that time specifically because it does change and it did change, but at that time did not help. It meant that I wasn’t able to assimilate any of the nutrients that I was getting in because I was up in the fiber content and it was passing straight through. And importantly, it depends what fiber at that point.

And that’s where you get into so many different. You had to research so much to actually understand, okay, there is this little piece of information, but if you dig into that any more, then it becomes this huge subject and that’s true of anything. And yeah, so I feel that you need to do that digging to actually find what it is for you and just keep digging and keep digging.

Steven Sashen:

That’s such an interesting point. We start out, we think we’re pretty smart. And then the more we learn, the dumber we realize we are until you get to a certain point, whether it’s about something internal, personal or external, where you do start getting legitimately smarter again. And then the challenge you have to deal with then is if you get really smart about that one new thing, you have to remind yourself that you’re smart about that one new thing and not every thing.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s something you always need to pull back from. I completely agree with that.

Steven Sashen:

So anything else other than dietary things that you tried that were like serious cases of, oops, that didn’t work?

Nick Winder:

Well, I suppose the obvious one, there is probably fitness as well. So I thought I had to get fit again. So how do I get fit? I go running. And obviously, running is a massive stress. It’s a huge stress. And it doesn’t really matter what type of exercise you’re thinking of at all, it is a stress. And the reason that fitness works in terms of health sometimes, it’s because it is a stress, but at that point, you need to understand what the difference is between good and bad stress, or more to the point, it’s like, how much stress are you putting on your body at that time?

So you think of your glass of water and you’re adding stress and you’re adding water in, it’s like, you can get to that level where you’re right up to the brim. If you just do that small extra thing, whatever it is, it could be anything, it could be running, it could be the argument that you had with someone on the street, it could be absolutely anything, but the water will pour over and your health will just break down at that point. And that’s how I feel what actually happened to me in the end. If you look into my personal history or my health history, you can then see, oh, there was this plus this plus this plus this, and oh, I broke. And there you go. And that’s what happens to many people.

Steven Sashen:

And what kind of arguments are you having with people on the street?

Nick Winder:

Well, actually I’m thinking about pets at the moment. So when one dog comes up to another dog, whose fault is it? I don’t know.

Steven Sashen:

I was thinking I haven’t had a good argument on the street with anybody, but I do in my car have arguments with imaginary police officers who imaginarily pull me over. And then I imaginarily talk myself out of the ticket with like righteously indignant logic. So that’s the closest that I come to arguing with people on the street.

Nick Winder:

I’m surprised you’re not arguing with the other people in the other cars, but with the windows up.

Steven Sashen:

Oh, you know what? I have a new practice that I’ve been doing. A couple of weeks ago, I realized, between my office and the house is basically, it’s two roads, and people routinely drive at least 10 or 15 miles under the speed limit. And it makes me insane. And it was making me insane twice a day, every day for six years. And I thought, I got to do something about this. And I decided that I was no longer going to let those people driving slowly in front of me be an excuse to be unhappy.

And so one way of proving that I was no longer doing that is every time someone is, I use it as a cue now, so anytime someone’s driving under the speed limit in front of me, it has to be under the speed limit, it doesn’t have to be at the speed that I want them to be driving, which is like 10 miles over the speed limit. But if they’re driving under the speed limit, I use that as a reminder to think of as many things as I can that I’m grateful for. And sometimes it’s as simple as, I love the blue skies in Colorado. And so now, I almost, I’m not quite there, but I almost look forward to people driving under the speed limit in front of me, it has radically changed things. It’s been very entertaining. So that’s the closest that I come to arguing with people who are in other cars around me.

Nick Winder:

Well, that’s awesome. You can just reframe your actual anger into something else.

Steven Sashen:

No, I can’t. So see, this is what’s so funny. I tried reframing it in many ways before I tried to think about it differently or imagine why they were doing what they were doing. I couldn’t reframe it. I just have to create a new, I had to just make this new trigger that led to a different thing. So now there’s like this Pavlovian response, where instead of being upset and that’s the end of it, the upset is now something that makes me salivate, if you will, and have this new experience. And so it’s just changed the relationship. Nothing’s changed about my not liking people driving under the speed limit, except that it’s no longer, it doesn’t end with frustration, it ends with appreciation, which is a weird.

Nick Winder:

So the point of that you’re upset, is that still there? And does that still manifest or [inaudible 00:15:54]?

Steven Sashen:

It’s shifting. It’s definitely changing. So it’s not that I don’t notice people driving under the speed limit in front of me, I’m not oblivious to it, I don’t enjoy it per se, but I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s just slowly, it’s only been going on for like two or three weeks. It’s just the whole relationship to driving has changed.

And there’s another thing, like if somebody was driving slowly in front of me and I get to a red light that I would have been able to make on my own, the cue that I use or the thing that I do for that one is I just make myself laugh for no reason. I just start laughing. It’s completely artificial. But it also, after like 10 seconds of it, you find yourself just kind of laughing, like, this is pretty goofy. So I’ve just used the things that upset me, I’m using the upset as a trigger for some different thing. And it’s been slowly changing the relationship of the initial trigger as well. It’s too early for me to tell you that I now drive slowly and enjoy it or whatever it is, but it has been really interesting.

Nick Winder:

So that’s a similar thing to put in the pencil in the mouth. When you’re about to starting laughing, you put the pencil between-

Steven Sashen:

But a there’s a difference. The difference is that that one is urban folklore. So someone researched that and they have been unable to replicate, a number of people tried to replicate that study, where you put the pencil in your mouth and that makes you fake smile. And they haven’t been able to reproduce that same thing with the “power moves”, like standing with your legs straddled in your hands on your hips, it’s supposed to boost testosterone. The last things I read was people have been unable to reproduce that.

So I’m a big fan. Not surprisingly, I like debunking things. So there’s certain things that sound good. And the first thing that I do when I hear one of those is I look to see, not that I’m trying to be a cynic or a skeptic per se, but I’ve just heard so many things. I’m going to be 59 in, holy smokes, a month. How’d that happen? I’m going to be 59 in a month. And I’ve just seen so many things that started out as the next great, whatever, that very soon thereafter were proven to be completely not true, that I’ve just developed a bit of a radar for them. And so when I hear certain ones, I go, I got a sneaking suspicion this one’s not going to hold up and I would love it if it did, but I’m also open to the fact that it might not.

And so anyway, that’s a bit of a tangent, but so, all right. So back to like three tangents ago, so you started this experiment on yourself and what did you find? Keep going, I don’t want to prompt you too much. What was the next stage of the evolution of coming back to health?

Nick Winder:

Yeah. So it’s back to that incremental process again. So the fundamentals, so basically being able to, I like to say, reinforce your foundation to build resilience. So those foundations are really, really important. So, if we’re looking at running, for example, we need to be healthy before we start running. Not the other way round. It’s super important there.

Steven Sashen:

Well, for someone who then is significantly overweight, who does live on a diet of Twinkies, who hasn’t done anything for awhile, how does that jibe with being healthy first?

Nick Winder:

Well, okay. So I think it goes back to the MOVEMENT Movement. It’s important to move. There you go movement. So that’s one of the fundamentals that I tried to teach is it doesn’t really matter how you’re moving, you just need to start moving, whatever that is. So I think a great example is, I’m actually a software engineer by trade and there’s many of us out there that were just sat in offices all day, always sat in a chair all day. It doesn’t even matter if you’re sat, you could be stood. You could be stood at a standing desk. It doesn’t mean you’re active. It doesn’t mean you move. So I’d like to just-

Steven Sashen:

Sorry, I just had a pause there. I just love you so much for saying that. Because it is so funny how, I mean, first of all, this is actually a perfect example of what we were talking about a second ago, sitting is the new smoking is the way it came out. And then Daniel Lieberman from Harvard has a new book where he points out that hunter gatherers spend like 10 or 12 hours a day sitting, but they’re not just sitting in mobile, they’re shifting position, they get up, they do a little walking, they get back, but they’re basically not moving for more hours in the day than most people who are sitting in a chair, and certainly, most people who are standing at a desk or even in a warehouse.

And so it’s another one of those things that sounded great and people still totally believe it, but the reality is a little different. But the whole idea of just moving at all, whether that’s a brilliant way of getting into the process, if you will. So rather than having people like jump straight in, which could be too much stress and have that water overflowing. I see where that’s going.

Nick Winder:

Yeah, so one of the examples I actually gave in one of my courses is movement, it doesn’t have to be the walking and the running that we were thinking of, I actually try and encourage people to, even if they’re watching TV at night or something like that, get down onto the floor, get down onto the floor and just start changing positions, lay on your front, sits up, kneel, do something like that, because that in my eyes is still movement. And I think that’s because it comes back to put in a range of motion through your joints and also putting yourselves into a different position to what you would normally being. And that just help. Anything mechanically, it just absolutely helps.

Steven Sashen:

So just for anyone who’s looking for a loophole in this, what you just suggested does not, how do I want to say this? Being in a reclining chair and changing positions in the chair does not count.

Nick Winder:

Well, I don’t know. You can kneel in a reclining chair. You could. I often sit on chairs, but I don’t sit on chairs usually. I normally lay. I do other things.

Steven Sashen:

It’s funny. My wife and I just moved into a house and we inherited some reclining chairs. And I do enjoy the reclining part, but also, I’m as fidgety as hell in that chair, and I’m in more positions than I know what to do with other than just the position the chair puts me in.

Nick Winder:

Exactly. Exactly. And I’ve found that, I don’t know, personally, I will probably try and get rid of chairs most of my life now. It’s just the point of having a softer surface somewhere. And usually, that would be, if we were outdoors, that would be the grass or something like that, but we don’t have that indoor. So you can just have that softer rug. And if you’re laid on that, if you’re just on your side on that, that is actually relatively comfortable. I don’t think it should be 100% comfortable, because then it doesn’t give you that slight push to actually be able to go into that different position again. So, yeah, it’s creating that slight inadequacy.

Steven Sashen:

I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor and at stretching or just sitting. And every time I do it, I think growing up, I never knew anyone who did this. My parents never did it, I didn’t. It wasn’t a conversation with my friends, but now granted I’m much older than you are, so different thing, but it was not something that I ever saw my father doing. I mean, not like he never sat on the floor, but he would never sit on the floor to watch television or sit on the floor to have dinner, he would sit on the floor if he’s polishing shoes or something, but it was totally foreign.

Nick Winder:

Maybe I’d say it’s a possibility that they were moving through their range of motion throughout the rest of the day instead, they weren’t static at that point.

Steven Sashen:

I don’t know, but I think about just that relationship between different levels of space, so like floor, chair, standing, whatever it is. And they just didn’t have the same interest perhaps about sitting on the floor, or even more, sitting on the floor was somehow just not what people did. It was inappropriate.

Nick Winder:

Well, I feel obviously, there’s a massive cultural aspect to that as well. So we’ve traveled in Japan a fair bit. And it’s amazing to see the older generation, they still sleep on the tatami, on that mats on the floor still. And then they’ll roll that away. And then that’s their day, they have to get up and down off the floor all the time, again, range of motion.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah. Okay. So moving back to your evolution from illness to ultra.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. So yeah, the MOVEMENT Movement is one big thing. And so that, to me, the important thing was just to start walking again. That was the main thing for myself. So, if there is somebody out there that’s actually trying to get started on that running bandwagon, I would say, don’t worry too much about that now, even in my course, I even say, it’s like the first few weeks, we’re not going to be running, we’re not going to run, because that’s not really, it’s not going to be conducive to achieve your end goal. If you start running straight away, then you have the possibility of, I don’t know, injuring yourself or something like that. So we’re just going to start walking instead. So that was the philosophy that I went through with movement in general, but there are other pillars as well that go into that.

Steven Sashen:

Well, I want to go into those, but first, when you got back into walking, did it feel like an accomplishment to do it, or did it feel like it was annoying that you couldn’t run?

Nick Winder:

Yeah, it was still a frustration. And that’s, I think that goes back to the Type A mentality. Obviously, I wanted to go out and do a training run. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. And maybe that’s just a point of reframing. And actually one of those other pillars, which is breathing, helped me reframe that a little bit to look in a different area. I don’t have to look for performance. I can look for efficiency instead. So yeah, that helped.

Steven Sashen:

So how does breathing play into that?

Nick Winder:

So this is going into the kind of the holistic, like I said before, the holistic point of view. So I found that breathing was a great tool for me. So once I got to the point of running again, I obviously wanted to push all the time. And personally, I tried to push all the time. So the way I stopped myself and brought myself back was through nasal breathing. So I’m sure that you might have heard about nasal breathing, you would’ve heard about ChiRunning or something like that, which is basically a big proponent of nasal breathing for running. And it really helped me on a high level in terms of just slowing me down. So that factor of just slowing me down was the easy ones. It helped me just build that foundation, again that I was talking about before, but unbeknownst to me, I didn’t know at this time, it was actually doing so much more and there is so much information behind nasal breathing. And now I’m a big proponent of different type of breathing techniques, but just breathing through your nose being one of them.

Steven Sashen:

It’s an interesting thing. For people who don’t know yet, just breathing through your nose rather than your mouth, one of the things that happens is you can produce nitric oxide, which is very important. But it is an interesting thing, because people do get ideas that they could just close their mouth in a way they go, but you can’t do it that way. I mean, you’ve got to slow down, you’ve got to use that as a modulator, as a yardstick, as a training device, if you will, because if you can’t do that, then there’s something else that you’re not necessarily doing that might be good for you.

Now, speaking as a sprinter, it’s really funny, I’ve heard people talk about, oh, sprinting and then just breathe your nose when you’re recovering. It’s like, dude, I can’t suck in enough air through a tube that’s throwing air down my throat after I’m done with a 100 meters. So it’s a whole different thing. And I bring that up mostly because if you backing up to the whole idea of health, if you are interested in health and experimenting with nasal breathing and slowing down in order to accomplish that, and that will change, you won’t be going super slow forever, but it is an adaptation that has some very interesting effects. And people typically don’t really know how to experiment with that.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s something that I try and help people with. So for example, it just starts with being conscious about nasal breathing. And basically, during your run and during your everyday life, it’s just bringing yourself back, maybe you’re in the car and you’re getting annoyed with the person in front of you, bring yourself back.

Steven Sashen:

Who would ever do that? That’s ridicuLous.

Nick Winder:

Bring yourself back and think about your nose and then just start breathing slowly and softly. And that’s really important. It’s not deep breaths. And I think that’s one of the big misconceptions that we’ve got in today’s world is take a big deep breath. And that doesn’t actually work. What we need to do to calm ourselves down is actually use our nose, because then actually helps us start using our diaphragm, which is the muscle underneath our lungs. And using that will actually start calming us down by changing our physiology. So yeah, it’s really important to use it in different areas of our life. And I even go to the extremes, now I’ve been keeping my mouth shut overnight because-

Steven Sashen:

You’re one of those people.

Nick Winder:

Yeah, it’s a big thing. And obviously, I wake up every, I used to wake up every morning and, oh, I’ve got a dry mouth. I wonder why that is. I never thought about it. I never thought about that point, but yeah, I want to promote more nasal breathing.

Steven Sashen:

It is interesting how breathing, again, is coming back into people’s minds. I mean, when I first started doing breathing exercises, this is back in the early ’80s. And it was a thing then and disappeared in a way. And now for a number of reasons, Wim Hof and Buteyko and people who’ve done things from Buteyko, it’s coming back. And I think that it’s very interesting, and I’m hoping that people don’t try to make the same mistake with breathing that they do with diet, like this is the one thing that everyone has to do, which is what happens with diet. I hope people realize there’s a sort of range of breath, things that one can experiment with and use in different contexts.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. And I think that’s probably one thing I’d like to say about, well, certain varieties. So for example, Wim Hof has been on a big media train, and many people have tried it. And I’ve tried it, I use it every now and then, but importantly, every now and then, and I’d say that because it’s actually fairly stressful, it’s a stressful-

Steven Sashen:

Oh, well, it’s stressful. No, this is the thing people don’t understand, that particular form of breathing, it deliberately it does this paradoxical thing, increase stress and therefore, increasing adrenaline and cortisol while simultaneously being relaxed enough that you’re not experiencing it as that same kind of stress that otherwise would release adrenaline and cortisol. So it’s a very paradoxical thing, but that’s what makes it work is the stress.

Nick Winder:

Exactly. So then if you pair that with maybe some of the Buteyko breathing methods and not the breath holding, but just the minimal nasal breathing instead, then they pair together perfectly. You maybe do a little bit of a nasal breathing throughout the week, but you do Wim Hof once, maybe twice a week. And I think they pair much better together. So again, it’s looking into every little aspect of those areas.

Steven Sashen:

Okay. So I don’t know where we are in the trajectory of illness to ultra, but if you’ve been tracking in your brain, please continue.

Nick Winder:

It’s interesting, because we’ve not actually got to the point of ultra. So that’s, I don’t know, that’s a personal journey of mine and I’m not through with that yet. So obviously, four years ago, I was still I was in bed, and at some point throughout my journey, I decided that I wanted to complete an ultra.

Steven Sashen:

Pause right there. What’s the, I mean, speaking as a guy who doesn’t like driving 26.2 miles for a marathon, the idea of running that let alone something longer just literally never crossed my mind because I’m not just not wired for that. I’m a true sprinter, but so what was the thing that made you, that trip that thought in your mind and what happened once it did?

Nick Winder:

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting. So I think it’s a point of proving it to myself. That’s one thing. And it comes back to a mental aspect of saying like, it doesn’t matter what happens to my body, I can still achieve something. And maybe that’s a slightly unhealthy view upon it, but it doesn’t matter at this point, because it gives me a goal to work at. And to be able to achieve that goal, then I need to go through all these interesting exploration that I’ve gone through already to actually get to that point. And the point, the reason why I’m actually looking into like ultras is because I’ve had a bit of a past in different running aspects and cycling and things like that, and I did use to go on these slightly extreme journeys and they brought amazing, amazing light to me. And they were the reason why I like to go out.

And at that point of being in bed and not being able to do anything, it was depressing surprisingly enough. So I think the goal is to get back to that point. And I think this can help with anybody. So setting those goals maybe a little bit further away than you even think about, then those goals can help you incrementally build to be able to get to somewhere even better and somewhere that you’re not right now.

Steven Sashen:

Yeah, having, let’s call it an organic goal, something that motivates you for some reason that, I don’t even know how to describe it, that feels authentic, that doesn’t feel like you just tacked it on because I need a goal, is hugely important. I mean, one of the things about sprinting for me is that there are races and I’m always training for a race. Even during the last 15 months, I’ve been training for a race that I don’t know when it’s going to happen, but in fact, oh, wait, that’s just remind me there’s a race coming up right before my birthday. I got to check that out. And so that’s very motivating for me. The competition is motivating, just the test to see how I’m doing, frankly, the test to see how much I can slow down the process of getting slower as a sprinter, because that’s what happens at around this age, it starts to fall apart. But if I can stave that off and slow the curve down or flatten the curve in this case, that would be very important.

So there was some thought about, I mean, ultra running is becoming more popular in certain circles. And I think a lot of people are seeing that as a thing that, maybe the way I would describe it as sort of somewhat artificial goal, like it’s just been put out there and it’s not necessarily the way that they feel, think, move, it doesn’t match their body, mind, et cetera, et cetera, but they just put it out there because it is a goal. And to try to find one that really works for you, that’s another part of the process, I imagine.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. I think that was probably, it used to be the marathon that took that mantle and people wanted to run the marathon because it was a goal that they knew about. And now the ultra has come on the scene, well, it’s been a while, but ultra’s at the forefront now and people are moving towards that a little more. I think the good thing about the ultra scene, though, is that there’s a community and a collective that bands together a little bit more than, say, the marathon scene because the marathon scene, although road winning scene has traditionally been a little bit harder to get into because it’s, I don’t know, I want to say elitist, but it’s not really elitist, but it’s hard to approach really, it’s to get into the road winning scene. So I think that’s where ultras, maybe that’s the reason why more people are coming on board and that’s their goals.

Steven Sashen:

I think the community thing is really important, even if whatever you’re doing, I think it’s the reason that CrossFit is popular and yoga classes are popular. I mean, finding a community is it allows you to offload some of the motivation to the community and you just go along for the ride. The number of times where my training partner and I have said to each other, I’m so glad you called me and reminded me to come out to train today because I was going to just stay in bed or do whatever it was. And way back when I was, I don’t know, 15, 16, I was in All American Gymnastic way back then, I was writing a fitness book and the first chapter was find a partner, because I knew then that like during the summer, when we weren’t in school and we were lifting weights to get stronger for gymnastics, there was no way we were going to be able to do it on our own. It was just too much effort to do it on your own.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. And maybe that’s somewhere that you can look in from the health aspect, like you could do a similar thing there. So it’s basically accountability really. That’s all it is. And that accountability normally comes from the doctor’s side, but it doesn’t have to be the medical professional. He doesn’t have to be the medical professional. It can be anybody. So I don’t know. Yeah, go through that journey with somebody else. That would be awesome.

Steven Sashen:

So where do you, if you had to look at the spectrum or the scale from illness to ultra, where do you position yourself now?

Nick Winder:

That’s difficult. Obviously, I have plans in my head, but not quite public yet. So I would say maybe at the moment, I’m looking for a marathon at the end of this year. That’s something I’m still aiming towards. It’s not a race either. That’s another thing. It doesn’t have to be a race. It doesn’t, the goal is still there, though.

Steven Sashen:

What you just said is so important, and it’s hard for people to notice, I imagine. What I was thinking is that over time, somebody will say to me, they want to get a pair of zero shoes. They say, I have a race coming up in six weeks, will I be able to run in your shoes? And I go, how the hell do I know? So, but more importantly, what you want to do is listen to what your body is doing. And if it’s ready for the race, it’s ready for the race. And if it’s not, it’s not. And that’s the way it is. And so what you just described is you’ve got this idea of a marathon at the end of the year, but I could tell just from the way you said it, that if you’re not ready at the end of the year, it’s not going to stress you out. That’s a lightly planted flag.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. So for example, my goal for last year was to run a marathon. I didn’t do it. So that’s why it’s now this year. Yeah, and I think that actually comes back to the health aspect again. So I still struggle every now and then with, I think the easiest way to explain it, it’s like auto immune issues. So it’s mainly fatigue and things like that. So sometimes my training plan and my training blocks don’t go fully to plan. And you know what? That’s okay. For one week, if I have to miss all my training sessions, it doesn’t matter. That’s happened and it has to happen. That’s okay. And then you just readjust from that point onwards. And I think that’s something that, going back to the start, I was saying that running community, it’s something that they struggle with a little bit more is being able to adjust and just adjust their lives around running.

Steven Sashen:

It’s a human thing. Humans like to have simple answers. So I want to run a 5k, I want to run a marathon, what’s the plan that gets me to do that by this date when this race that I want to be in is happening? It’s like, yeah, it would be just the simple thing people ask you to how long is it going to take for me to transition to be comfortably running in a pair of minimalist shoes? I go, I don’t know for everybody. And it’s going to be less time, may be less time than you think, might be more time than you think, but suffice it to say, it’s going to be the right amount of time. And when you’ve done that, you’ve got that for life.

But people, it’s an old, old Sufi story of this man is trying to get to Bombay and he doesn’t know how far it is. And he sees a farmer on the road and yells, “Hey, farmer, how long until I get to Bombay?” And the farmer stares at them. And it just goes back to farming. The guy’s confused and yells again, “Farmer, how long is it to Bombay?” And the farmer looks at him and goes back to farming. The guy asks, “Farmer… Nevermind.” He just starts to walk away. And the farmer yells, “Two hours.” And the guy says, “What? I asked you twice and you gave me no answer. Why now?” He said, “Well, I didn’t know how fast you walked.”

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Well, that goes back to, so something around the minimal footwear. So personally, that took me, I don’t know, two years maybe, actually completely transitioned into barefoot style shoes across the range. And that’s because, I don’t know, I took it slowly and I did the wrong thing sometimes. And yeah, you make mistakes, it’s going to happen. But I actually used to work in a shoe store in a running shoe store. So I used to be fitting these people. And at that point, I didn’t really had an inkling about how minimal footwear and barefoot walk-in and anything like that would actually strengthen the feet. And it’s kind of like, again back to the holistic way of thinking, it’s like, well, why are we wrapping our feet in this cast if we’re wanting to actually produce good performance? It doesn’t make sense. Like a weightlifter would never put that arm in a cast before doing a big weight or something like that.

So it kind of like, it started coming to my brain at that point, but I’d never actually knew. And I was fitting these people with these traditional shoes. And yeah, so that journey can be so different for everybody. And if you’re not ready for that journey, that’s another thing. Those people I was selling the shoes to, if I said anything about minimal footwear or just walking around barefoot, they might’ve looked at me like I was crazy because it’s not entered their mind.

Steven Sashen:

It’s so funny you say that. Right before you and I talked, I just did a little podcast rant about how to talk to people about minimalist footwear. And it’s basically, if you’ve discovered the value of it, you don’t, well, like for me, the way I tell the story in the podcast, I say, I used to deal with a lot of meditators, they’d come back from a 10 day meditation course and talk about how it changed their life. And they wanted to tell everyone, and I would say, shut up for about two weeks, because it’s going to fade. But with minimalist footwear, it doesn’t fade, it gets continually better, but you can’t just tell people they’re wrong and need to do some new thing.

You’ve got to find the right way to present the information where people are open to hearing the conversation, open to going, oh, that makes sense, like you would never put your arm in a cast and then try to lift weights, or as I say, you don’t want to play tennis in a body cast. Irene Davis from Harvard, she used to be teaching people how to fit orthotics, teaching physical therapists how to fit orthotics. And one day had a similar realization, which was when someone comes in for a physical therapy, we want them moving as much as possible to build up range of motion and will have strength as they heal, but why are we a mobilizing their feet for almost everything that they come in for from head to toe? It just, something seems a little off. And that was the beginning of her journey that led her to becoming perhaps the world’s leading expert in natural movement and minimalist footwear.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. So I suppose, I went through a similar journey when fitting shoes, fitting shoes is interesting one, but yeah, fitting shoes.

Steven Sashen:

That’s really funny actually. It is interesting. When you were working in the shoe store, what kind of training did they give you to put people in the shoes that don’t actually help?

Nick Winder:

So basically, it was somebody that had been trained by somebody else that trained by somebody else that had been trained by somebody else. And that’s not specifically a bad thing because they obviously learn through the process and maybe they refine it themselves.

Steven Sashen:

A lot of that’s coming from the shoe companies as ways of selling shoes. I mean, I won’t mention a shoe company by name, although I could, who came up with the idea of how to get people on a treadmill evaluate their running and then recommend a shoe based on what the evaluation is. The fact that the army has tested this process and found that it makes no difference, that you could put people in any random shoe off the shelf, because most of the shoes are identical anyway. But even if they weren’t, you could put people in almost any shoe and it doesn’t affect injury rates at all. Not true about minimalist slash barefoot stuff truly mentalists. And there’s a whole bunch of shoes that are sold as minimalists that aren’t, which is a whole other story. But I mean, there’s an event called the running event. It’s all for shoe sellers. And you could literally take the logos from almost every shoe and put it on almost any other shoe and nobody would know the difference. It’s crazy.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. And that style of basically putting them on the treadmill, and we started using different kind of technologies, where you’re using like an iPad to view them and then drawing lines on there. And basically, that’s not a way of, maybe not diagnosing, but not a way of fitting the shoes. It’s just trying to convince the customer a little bit more. That’s all it is.

Steven Sashen:

Totally. Yeah, it’s like once you have, there’s two things that make people feel good about a buying decision, something that looks like science and something that looks like it’s personal to them. And I was on a panel discussion at the American College of Sports Medicine a couple of years ago, and the guys from both Brooks and Adidas, when I asked, what’s in the future, they were both saying in different ways, oh, it’s all about individualization, everyone has their own unique, little snowflake running style. And we just need to accommodate that. It’s like, yeah, if you look at really good runners, their form is almost exactly the same as the guy next to them. The better you get, the more you weed out those little idiosyncratic things, because there is a right way to do it. And most of the time putting them in that footwear is not letting them get to that right way to do it.

But I mean, it was so snowflaky that I almost said to one of the guys, you guys are getting so ridiculous about what you think people need, why you think people need different pairs of shoes for different things that I’m waiting for one of you to say, you need a pair of shoes for when you walk into the bathroom and a different pair for when you walk out, because you don’t weigh as much and your body weight is distributed differently. I mean, it’s like that kind of crazy. And I mean, it really, it’s mind blowing, but a lot of it, you learn from someone who learned from someone who learned to someone. The top of that food chain is often a shoe company who’s telling you what to say.

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that probably goes back to the medical industry as well. So I suppose we can’t cast too much information around that type of stuff, but-

Steven Sashen:

Well, I would argue that the differences in the medical world there by, I mean, there’s two things, by and large, they are always refining what the person at the top of the food chain is telling. And when information comes out that shows that what we used to believe is not necessarily true, a lot of that information gets disseminated much more quickly than what’s happened with footwear, because with footwear, like the last 50 years, the only thing that’s changed is a different kind of cushioning, a different kind of our support. But it’s fundamentally the same story, despite the fact that the research could not be more clear that those shoes are problematic and truly natural movement shoes are not. And that has not permeated at all. And people say things like, well, professional athletes aren’t wearing your shoes. Well, actually there’s a bunch of who are, but the ones who are doing it because they found real benefits, not because I’m paying them a million dollars a year to do it.

Nick Winder:

Yeah, I think because we’ve been entrenched in this kind of like motion for so long that it’s really hard to break out of. And even for me, like I said, my barefoot journey lasted over two years. It took me two years to actually transition fully. Imagine trying to tell someone that’s buying a shoe that, okay, two years down the line, you’re going to be able to do everything with this. It’s like, well, yeah, that investment’s a little bit much for them, isn’t it? So, yeah, it’s difficult.

Steven Sashen:

It’s funny, I had shoulder surgery and afterwards my doctor said, we did a lot of work in there, I said, “I don’t know how I feel about you being so giddy about how much work you got to do.” But he said, “But just FYI, this is going to be about two and a half years of recovery.” And actually, it was great that he said that because it gave me a frame of reference where I knew where I was in the process. I knew that if it wasn’t going as fast as I wanted, it was because he did a lot of work in there. And so it didn’t depress me. The only thing was depressing was my insurance company told me I was fine after three weeks. So that was not the case. So that was a very entertaining argument that I someday will tell that whole story.

Nick Winder:

Different points of view, I think.

Steven Sashen:

That’s one way of putting it, financial interest. The doctor had been, the insurance company had a lot. So anyway, I want to start finding a way to bring this in towards the finish line, if you will. Is there anything that we’ve missed in the whole topic of health as being something different than fitness slash running as a way of getting there?

Nick Winder:

Yeah, I think the main overarching theme is just basically try and bring this back to yourself personally, because we’re all personally different, we’re all going to find different aspects of life that as much as the way that you run or the way that you even believe that your life should be lived, it’s very different. So you need to be able to experiment on yourself, experiment sounds a little bit strange, but it does mean that you will actually take some of the information that you actually receive and then say, okay, objectively, how does this work with you?

And so, if we take that back to the fitness and the health example, then we could say, okay, I’m going to be doing this training block where I’m trying to increase my VO2max. And that’s pretty objective, because if you had the money to be able to do a VO2max test, you could do that. But at the same time, it’s like, how are you doing that with your health? And that’s a little bit more difficult, I would say. So if you want to try and do that, you really need to dig deep to actually find out, well, how is that improving your health? And then at that point, where are those links to be able to actually say it’s actually improved in different areas of my life also.

So, for example, with the breathing aspect of things, so we have the nasal breathing that I was talking about, and I could say a million things about how it improves my health, but at the same time, I can show you where it’s improved my running and therefore, fitness. So it’s improved my health, it’s improved my fitness and that’s awesome. And that’s what you want to try and find. It’s like, find the things that work for you and work in so many different areas. So it’s the 80/20 rule. You could say that as well.

Steven Sashen:

I’ve a secret for getting VO2max tests.

Nick Winder:

Okay, cool.

Steven Sashen:

Check local universities and see which ones have research programs and see if they’re doing research that you can apply for. I’ve gotten tens of thousands of dollars of free testing, because they were doing some research that I was actually curious about. I mean, it sounded like something I would want to know the answer to. So I was happy to participate. I got paid money to then get tens of thousands of dollars worth of free testing.

Nick Winder:

Maybe, yeah. Maybe you can apply that elsewhere as well. It’s like, what else can I do?

Steven Sashen:

I’m going to work that problem. I’m sure there are, well, it’s funny, I just remembered right after I graduated college, I moved to New York City and I used to apply for psychological tests. And so I made a bunch of money doing psychological tests, but I often, the results that I produced usually got thrown away because they were doing studies that had been done millions of times. It was just for undergraduates to learn how to do a study. So the famous one is a memory study where they try to get you to memorize a number of things in a row to prove that our short-term memory can hold seven plus or minus two items. But when they asked me to memorize a series of numbers, in my head, I was imagining them as phone numbers. And so I was seeing the patterns. And so when I got up to memorizing it like 40 or 50 numbers in a row, because it was just phone numbers, they got very upset with me. You’re not allowed to do that. You just told me to memorize numbers, you didn’t tell me how. And they paid me.

Nick Winder:

Yeah, you’re a great test subject.

Steven Sashen:

I was horrible test subject. So Nick, if people, you’ve repeatedly mentioned things that you’re offering to help people discover this path that we’ve been describing. So would you tell people how they could get in touch with you and find out more about how they could join you in that process?

Nick Winder:

Yeah. Yeah. So, if you want to go on my website, it’s illnesstoultra.com. And there, you’ll find a bunch of blogs that I’ve written throughout my experimentation. You can see what I’ve been doing, and hopefully, that will help you. And also on there, you’ll find a free course, a 12-week free course, which is the Healthy Runner. And that goes into some of these aspects we’ve been talking about. So it goes into this breathing, movement, the sleep, and the food, and it tries to encourage you to actually find what works for you and be able to get to the end of those 12 weeks and then refine that process a little bit more. So you can find us on illnesstoultra.com. You can find me on Instagram. And so that’s illnesstoultra too, Facebook, Illness to Ultra. Find us wherever you want.

Steven Sashen:

That’s perfect. As I like to say, you can find us, we’re at Xero Shoes wherever you happen at or slash your Illness to Ultra, wherever you happen to at or slash.

Nick Winder:

That’s the one.

Steven Sashen:

Well, Nick, it has been a total pleasure. And I really look forward to hearing how this continues for you and with the people that you’re sharing this journey with. I love that you’re sharing it as a process and not as a prescription after some fact, where you happen to be a genetic freak, who’s trying to pretend that everyone else is too, which is a very common thing that we see in the fitness world. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And for everyone else, I hope that you enjoy this. If you want to find out more about what Nick’s doing and how you can participate, you just heard that.

If you want to find out more about what we’re doing here with the MOVEMENT Movement, you know where to do that as well, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. Again, you’ll find all the different places you can interact with the podcast, that you’ll find all the previous episodes, you’ll find us on Facebook and et cetera, et cetera. Actually, it’s not the same thing for at or slash everywhere because they weren’t all available, but that’s a whole other story. But most importantly, oh, if you have any questions or comments or recommendations, anyone you think should be on the show or things that you’d like me to address, just drop me an email, [email protected], and that covers it. So most importantly, go out and have fun and live life feet first.

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